A Place for Critters Land protection preserves habitat and safeguards Missouri’s iconic landscapes
People used to ask Don Williams’ great-grandfather why he refused to log or sell a mostly idle portion of his farm. Set in the hills south of the Lake of the Ozarks, what the family called “the backside” was too rugged to farm and too far from the lake to develop. Selling o the timber seemed like the only use that would turn a profit. “Yeah, it’s not any good for anything and not much use to us,” Williams remembers his great-grandfather saying. “But it means a lot to the critters that live there. So, we keep it for them. Everything needs a home, a place to live.”
Williams later became the owner of what was left of his great-grandfather’s farm. And like the man he called “Pa,” he was faced with a decision about its future. Much was the same as it was when Williams lived with his great-grandparents as a boy. He could still walk from where Mill Spring disappeared underground into the pores of a karst system to the spot where it bubbled up again and flowed on. The mix of Ozarks hardwoods still towered over a tangle of dogwoods, blackberries and sassafras. Some things had changed, however. A hot real estate market around the
lake had pushed development into previously overlooked parts of Camden County. Williams said he had multiple high-dollar oers from developers looking to buy 100 acres of the old family farm. “They wanted to subdivide it and sell 3- or 5-acre lots, which would just destroy the environment there,” he said. Not that he couldn’t use the money. The financial pressure of a career change combined with upcoming medical bills had convinced Williams that it was time to sell, but he sought an alternative to handing over the land
THIS PAGE A stream on the property moves above and below ground as it crosses a karst system that undergirds part of the area. © Don Williams
6 MISSOURI : ACTION AND IMPACT
Made with FlippingBook - Online magazine maker